Roles Introduction

What Are Social Roles

	Roles are a set of rules or norms for proper behaviour associated with particular statuses.
	Roles are socially constructed.
	They are defined by each culture and will vary in time and place.
	They may be positive, negative or neutral.
	They have a massive effect on the ways that the rest of society treat individuals; if a person is in a role they will be treated very differently solely because they hold that role.
	Roles control social identity.
	Roles can be chosen, fallen into accidentally, or imposed by others.
	People will often live up to positive roles expectations, but crucially they will also live down to negative role expectations.
	Role cues may include clothing, environment, companions, behaviour, speech, skills, and most importantly the overall image conveyed. These cues tell us how to treat people in these roles. This treatment can be good or bad depending on the social value of the role.

Why Are Social Roles Important?

SRV suggests that the most important factor in giving value to people (or in taking value from people) is the number and value of the roles held by that individual.

When you are in a social role and both you and any observers are aware of the fact that you are in such a role, your behaviour and that of others will change solely because you are in that role. Try to think of some examples

It also suggests that people who are devalued will be gradually stripped of valued roles and will be given instead a set of devalued roles.

SRV further suggests that encouraging positive roles for devalued people is one of the best ways of overcoming their devalued status.

Role Domains

Roles have a number of domains: Relationships, Residence, Economic, Education etc.

Historical Deviancy Roles

Wolfensberger suggests that there are Roles that have historically been assigned to people seen as deviant:

Negative Roles that People at Risk are Cast Into:

Non-Human

Pre-human

No-longer Human

Sub-human, animal, vegetable, object, thing

Other, alien, non-human but not sub-human

Menace Or Object of Dread

Waste Material

Rubbish, discard, offal, excrement

Object Of Ridicule

Trivium

Object Of Pity

Burden Of Charity

Ambiguous borderline role of object of charity

Burden of charity

Child

Eternal

Once Again

Ambiguous Borderline Of Holy Innocent

Sick Or Diseased Organism

Death-Related Roles

Dying, already dead, as good as dead

Roles and Societal Reaction

Deviancy Role Perceptions and Resultant Service and Model

The way in which people are perceived via their historical deviancy roles has a determining effect on how society will treat them. If a person is seen to be in the role of patient, they will be seen as in medical need and treated by doctors and nurses. If they are seen as a menace, they will be seen as criminals and contained by jailers. This applies even when such people are not ‘sick’ or a ‘menace’ but are only seen as occupying those roles. Additionally, the ‘nurses’ and ‘doctors’ may not be truly so (they may be untrained or so poorly trained that they would not be acceptable to the valued world) and the ‘jailers’ may not be true prison guards, but may be nurses or other professions acting as jailers.

Roles That Certain Groups Have Forced on Them

Depending on the ‘label’ used for a devalued group, the individuals in that group will be very likely to have certain of the following roles forced upon them

Label:

· Learning Disability

· Mental Disorder

· Old Age

· Alcohol Habituation

· Poverty

· Racial Minority

· Criminal Offenders

· Epilepsy

· Drug Addiction

· Deafness

· Blindness

· Illiteracy

· Unborn

· Political Dissidence

It is worth at this stage, trying to decide for ourselves, which devalued roles are likely to be attached to which labels.

This will be covered in more detail later.

Summary of Roles

Roles are extremely powerful tools in determining how individuals and groups act. They are often more powerful than the true attributes of an individual in determining how that person will be treated by society.